Readers Write In #158: Apoorva Sagodharargal (1989)… still the pinnacle of Kollywood masala

April 14 is the Tamil New Year’s day. It does not change every year. And ever since its release on the Tamil New Year’s day of 1989, Apoorva Sagodharargal too hasn’t changed its position as the best-ever Kollywood masala. And here’s why…

It is just a plain old revenge drama with a simple premise – two long-separated brothers come together to avenge their father’s killing. Can it get simpler? The film deploys the usual tools of masala that are available to a mainstream film maker – mother sentiment, pregnant lady sentiment, love tragedy, brutal killings, rich girl-poor boy romance, comedy, deadly villains, funny cops, good songs and stunts, and finally a happy end. The characters are either black or white. There are no grey shades to transcend the script. No unexpected twist anywhere. It is a very straightforward narration. Still what a magic on screen!

The movie has a placid start with a close shot of a duck in an idyllic village, only to throw us onto a racy trajectory with a jeep ripping through a thatched hut like an arrow tearing a tender heart. The action block goes on with the father-police inspector Sethupathy (Kamal Hassan No.1) stealing the limelight – behaving like a roaring lion with the foursome villains and at once turning into a naughty kitten with his pregnant wife (Srividya). Very soon, within a matter of 12 minutes, everything is over: Comedy icon Nagesh gets established as a barbaric villain with a sharp humour, a star from the yester years ‘James Bond’ Jaishankar joins him; the villains are arrested and disgraced by Sethupathy; but court acquits all of them while throwing the upright inspector out of job; it is the villain team’s turn and they ravage the beautiful couple within moments after the couple had shared some lovely moments; Sethupathy is killed mercilessly right in front of his heavily pregnant wife; and the title credits keep rolling as the poisoned, pregnant widow escapes on a boat, with maestro Ilayaraja giving out one of his best background scores.

Only a few other movies have reached this level of screenplay in establishing so much, so tightly, in just about a dozen opening minutes. Even the sheet anchor scenes of Thalapathi (1991) shot in black and white – of a teenage, unwed mother abandoning her just born baby in one of the open bogies of a goods train; the baby being rescued by some kids only to be accidentally let to float in a stream; and soon the baby being regained from the flowing water and he growing up into a dejected, angry little boy with a single question that resonates throughout the movie ‘Why did my mother abandon me?” – that run for the initial ten minutes as the titles roll, and which are equally backed by Ilayaraja’s masterpiece melody, are a shade lesser than that of Apoorva Sagodharargal’sprelude scenes.

Into the story, after lots of fun and a love tragedy, the mother reveals their brutal past to Appu (Kamal Hassan No.2) who just tried to commit suicide; and the dwarf-clown instantaneously decides to take revenge. Bloody scenes of Sethupathy getting killed are intercut here reminding us the brutality. And for Appu it is not just about avenging his father’s killing, it is also about eliminating those who were responsible for his stunted growth which gives a constant reason for others to mock at him. It is just smart writing by Kamal Hassan. But a single thought lingers in our minds – how is this little clown going to hit back at the four villains who were nothing less than devils. May be Raja could have pulled it off. But not this dwarf! Interval is something peculiar to our masala films. It is not easy to break the standard three-part story structure and create an interval block in the first place; and thereafter make it compelling too; riveting enough to make the audience finish their coffee and cigarettes quickly and get back to their seats filled with anticipation and curiosity. Apoorva Sagodharargal pulls it off in style.

The second half is about how the Lilliputian goes about killing the villains – using novel, believable but essentially cruel methods. But the movie carries itself so well that we do not watch those gory scenes through our fingers. We kind of relish them. Sample this: of all things in the world, to kill his second target Appu uses his circus tiger to tear up the man into pieces. (Wait, wait… lions are reserved for the climax.) This scene of an extremely cruel murder transforms smoothly into a peppy number with the car mechanic Raja (Kamal Hassan No.3) performing puli vesham (tiger costume) folk dance. And in between this quick and enjoyable transition is ample humour by Janakaraj, as the investigating inspector and his sidekick constable, Sambandham. Neenga engeyo poiteenga sir! And Kamal Haasan, the ingenuous script writer, in an attempt to achieve the desired scene shift with flair, has also used 2-D animation here. It is funny, it is creative.

In the scenes in and around Appu’s love failure, the actor Kamal and the maestro compete terrifically with each other. These are a set of rare scenes in cinema, that work equally good – without audio or without video. Even when you mute the music and just watch the film, the actor’s sheer brilliance makes you cry for Appu whose soul gets shredded into pieces by the tragic end of his love. Well, you have the same effect even when you close your eyes and simply let yourself get immersed in the heart wrenching melody. It is like two superior players easily winning the match on their own, yet preferring to come together – not just to win, but to create history. But not that the dialog writer ‘Crazy’ Mohan was just a mute spectator here. The humour played out in this very tragic scene is unmissable. The marriage registration officer mocks at the dwarf Appu, only to be sort of defended by Appu saying that he was 27 years of age (basically, a man and not a kid). The officer mocks and laughs out, ‘Yedhu.. andha irupathi aarukku appuram varumey.. andha irupathi yezhaa?!’ What a pain. What a humour. The writing and dialogs puts you in quite a few tight spots like this where you are at a loss to understand your own state of mind. It happens when pain and joy blend, when comedy and tragedy dance together.

Lyricist Vaali’s versatility is legendary. In Apoorva Sagodharargal he proves his worth hands down. Sample this: Andha vaanam azhudhathaan indha boomiyey sirikkum.. oozing with pain, a sinking heart. Vazhavaikkum kaadhalukku jey! Vaalibathin paadalukku jey!.. pumping love and joy, carefree souls. The visuals too match the high quality of lyrics and music. It is quite interesting to see a dapper Raja dancing his intro song in the shop floor of an automobile factory filled with rows of newly minted cars and trendy girls. The biggest dream of a small time car mechanic, possibly. The same goes for vazhavaikkum song that is made a part of the story, rather than just existing in empty space. Perhaps it is the only full-fledged duet song in Tamil film history that features a dead body too!

The movie never loses sight of its 5-song/5-fight format of a mainstream masala. After all the story was by the legendary Panchu Arunachalam, the man to whom Kollywood owes half its wealth. But the film demonstrates the possibilities in store when an A-team decides to create something unique and more importantly – when all of its A-rated members fly in unison. This is not a movie where you can easily point out, “The music is wonderful!” and rest. With this movie, you cannot leave out P.C.Sriram when talking about Ilayaraja; you cannot miss ‘Crazy’ Mohan when mentioning about the scriptwriter Kamal Hassan or the lyricist. The same with the actors like the inspector Janakaraj, mother Manorama and the villain team that includes the Kamal-regulars like Nasser and Delhi Ganesh. That is the beauty of Apoorva Sagodharargal. It is quite a task to dissect a scene and say authoritatively who has excelled. We get a wholesome, new cinema experience. And that is what the team set out to deliver.

But if I were to single out a person who raises above the rest, it is probably the cinematographer P.C.Sriram. Appu looked like a dwarf; he was a dwarf! No animatics, no 3D modelling, no roto. Sheer old-fashioned camera tricks, real hard work and some great ideas. Yes, the DOP had a solid support from the actor and the editor duo B.Lenin and V.T.Vijayan. But the brain of the movie ultimately is P.C. An angle missed here or there would have made the entire movie like a high school stage drama. (Remember SRK from Hero? Well…) Even to this day, the making of Apoorva Sagodharargal awes everyone around, it continues to be enigmatic.

Great movies are made bottom-up and it requires an able hand to weave the individual threads of artistic brilliance into a magnificent cinematic experience. Hats off to director Singeetam Srinivasa Rao. It is not easy to manage talent. It is extremely difficult to manage extraordinary talent. Luckily, the project was in very safe hands. Over the years hordes of heavy weight masala films have hit the screens; like the corruption-based Shankar brand of block busters, village-based K.S.Ravikumar creations, P.Vasu class of pictures and A.R.Murugadoss and Atlee style of well packaged super hits. What is a masala movie? It is not easy to define. What is a successful masala? Even tougher to describe. But whatever it may mean, Apoorva Sagodharargal is the most successful masala of Kollywood since its release; the run continues even into the Tamil New Year of 2020.

(Bonus 1 – A deleted song ‘Ammava Naan..’ from the film is on Youtube.

We keep talking about how these movies did so much with so less back in the 80s and only using camera tricks etc. etc. But when tech is now available and money is not that hard to come by shouldn’t all these be much better now? why is it then we don’t see it? Take Kamal himself and his efforts in Dasavatharam or Uththama villian for instance. Or Selvaraghavan and Aayirathil oruvan….I wonder whether our actors/directors are good only when their hands are tied. When they are given a free reign(and abig budget), they are not sure how to execute their ideas.

Thanks for writing this piece. AS is supposedly my first movie on the big screen – I was born a few months after the film’s release. No wonder, it turned out to be Tamil cinema’s (and South India’s?) biggest hit. 🙂

The film is by far Crazy Mohan’s best work, IMO. It seems the lines were written by carefully keeping the actors/characters in mind: when Kamal shows the arrest warrant the Delhi Ganesh character says: “Enna ivan ration card mari kudukkuran”; Appu’s “Circus Thuppaki… pinnadiyum sudum… munnadiyum sudum.”.

Not the first and not the last write up on this brilliant film. Superb write up. There is a running commentary on the dwarf’s miserable position in the social pecking order but it’s very subtle and conveyed through incidents (absolutely no monologues, Murugadoss please note) so it’s possible to watch it as a pure masala entertainer based on a revenge theme (as I did when I was a child) or observe what the movie says about the ostracization of the dwarf (which I noticed much later).

Vaali was at the lowest point of his career during this phase. His lines in the songs in this movie aren’t exactly profound or poetic. Just fillers to fit the meter, albeit in a rhyming manner. Unna nenachen exemplifies this, as do the other songs

“.I wonder whether our actors/directors are good only when their hands are tied. When they are given a free reign(and abig budget), they are not sure how to execute their ideas.” – Great observation, but this is generally true about movie making or art worldwide. Constraints focus the mind and force artists to be creative. Check out the budgets of Godfather, Jaws or French Connection and you will be amazed. Only three sci-fi/fantasy auteurs have NOT replaced storytelling with spectacle (and instead used spectacle to complement the story) on a consistent basis – Spielberg, Peter Jackson and Nolan. For the rest, big budget has at the most been a vehicle to assemble a large cast and fill the screen with FX to get a large draw at the BO. But that’s just buzz, that’s no guarantee of memorability or longevity. Other spectacle Hollywood blockbusters of the 90s like Godzilla have not aged so well.

Even today, films from outside the Marvel/DC universe that are winning critical acclaim are often time period pieces. There, the filmmaker and his technicians are forced to mount a serious effort to recreate a bygone era and actors too have to really perform, really learn to inhabit a different age rather than just lazily play themselves. You will often find the odd film that did not have to take you back to a different time to be compelling viewing is still relatively low budget or at any rate, not an extravaganza. The excellent Whiplash with its sharply contrasted characterisation of the teacher and the pupil was made on just a $3mn budget. Even a multi starrer like Baby Driver came with a price tag of $34 mn. Definitely not big budget. Big budget is um Batman v/s Superman – $250 mn. IMDB ratings (7.6 for the former v/s 6.5 for the latter) aren’t infallible but in this case, they tell you where the money was better spent.

On similar lines, what good films ARE being made in India with a big budget? Either historicals or fantasy drawing from history (Baahubali). Because that’s where the budget actually gets utilised in a tangible way. Otherwise, it just goes to fatten the star’s paycheck.

@Madan I remember Crazy Mohan said in an interview that when writing comedy for theatre you learn you cannot bring the big production value into the stage as sets. The grandeur and flamboyance should be brought in by the writing. When Crazy Mohan wrote the underwhelming Jerry for Jithan Ramesh he said he sometimes received calls from the sets saying they couldn’t get the props or the set for the shots written. So, he made up lines for what was actually available and they rolled with it. I saw Avvai Shanmugi recently and the scene where Kamal Hassan comes down the pipe and says “Thanni varala athaan naane vanthu paathen” was originally part of the script or improvised on the sets (because cutting that wouldn’t have affected the script).

@Sundar you are right, the synergy at the center of AS has since been unparalleled.

AS is one of my all-time favourites. I don’t know which I liked more – the sheer vibrant youthfulness brought about by the Gouthami-Kamal pairing (Gouthami did the ditzy blonde schtick very well indeed) or the ‘dwarf’ Kamal turning from a good-natured circus clown into a cold-blooded killer. I remember shrinking back at his expression in one of the scenes.

And oh, Manorama! What a blessing that woman was! I still smile thinking of the ‘Ayyo, ayyayyo ayyo, ayyayyo ayyo!’ sequences. She is sorely missed.

I have to confess Unnai ninachaen still makes me a bit teary-eyed, even if it’s not profound.

Another interesting observation about the story is how “Appu” plays to his strengths. Being a dwarf he starts with a handicap. So, at interval point, we wondered how is he going to exact his revenge with his enemies with their position of advantage. Impressive how each revenge episode is setup. Shows the amount of thought and work that has gone in. He draws them in to setups where he has the upper hand. Management lesson #101. While he does lure the bad guys in to his play yards, he doesn’t kill them. They kill themselves.

Kamal’s face expressions when others make fun of his height, his humor when he is with other clowns, shock at the registrar’s office, disbelief when his mother calls him a dwarf, and how he unleashes the beast in him with a grin and nasty glee in the grand climax, are just Awesome.

Rad Mahalikudi : Right, dialogues were vera level in this film. The closest to Salim Javed like dialogue baazi. Crisp and cutting, no monologues, no big star megalomania and lot of embedded meta content.

@Anu – Ditto about the Kamal-Gauthami pairing and their scenes in the movie. Even now they feel so fresh and fun.

I’m surprised to see no one mentioning about the Annaatha Aduraar track here. It was one of those songs that was almost always blaring on speakers whenever we went on private buses that I grew wary of the song entirely and just skipped it whenever I listened to songs. I caught the movie on tv during one lazy afternoon a couple of years back, exactly a few scenes before the song and Holy-Effing-Shit I realised why folks didn’t ever wanna stop listening to it. It took me weeks to get through the day without listening to the song once or not humming it while I was working. Even the way it begins in the movie and where its placed-in is just so so fun.

“I’m surprised to see no one mentioning about the Annaatha Aduraar track here. ” – So…for me, I have gone up over the curve with that song because I didn’t start out from a position where I didn’t see how it fits in the film. It was the perfect foil to the Nazar murder scene, juxtaposing Appu’s cold blooded execution with Raja’s goofy but lovable charm. But I have heard it so many times by now that it becomes the weakest link in a strong soundtrack for me.

Honest Raj: Yes, had come up before on a Raja forum. It’s nice but also very typical of what Raja does in that song format. So I don’t feel like not including it in the soundtrack was a big miss.

Tambi Dude: “The shorty does not kill any of the four himself, not even with a gun.” – Yes and had he not chosen to accept guilt and surrender (and suppose the police weren’t there at the circus either), it’s possible he wouldn’t be found guilty for any of the murders. The last one is troublesome because it happens in the presence of witnesses for the first time. But if his justification could persuade the crowd to not testify against him, he could get off. Because there is nothing else to link him to any of the crimes.

A movie that blew me away the first time I watched it, then subsequently re-watched many many times and while the passing of time has uncovered blemishes on what I first thought was a flawless creation, it nevertheless remains a superlative piece of entertainment.

Rewatching it last year a couple of things I made note of:

-The brutality of the prologue is tonally at odds with the rest of the movie’s lighter tone. In fact, I remember watching the uncut torture and killing of Kamal Sr on a VHS only once and since then every version on cable or YouTube has been heavily edited (is it shown uncut on Indian cable?) The level of violence here is akin to a more “exploitation” version of a revenge flick like Death Wish or I Spit On Your Grave (or for a more Indian example, something like Naan Sivappu Manithan) not the more jocular mass appeal flick the film ended up being

-The onset of middle age and it’s attendant cynicism has rendered the Registry Office scene a little less poignant for me. Deliberately engineered to swing sympathy to Apu when the revelation of his father’s murder should have accomplished that. Or, with no love or marriage to look forward to, Apu is free to dedicate himself to vengeance? Either way, it doesn’t quite work for me anymore. Look, Kamal’s performance is still freaking brilliant here but I question Apu’s naivete . He’s vertically, not mentally challenged and for all intents and purposes he’s shown to be a well-adjusted guy with a network of supportive friend. I mean…no alarm bells that this hot chick is asking me to the Registry Office? Not even a simple “Errr…why?”. Also,girl quite conveniently doesn’t mention she wants him there as a witness. And.. not one of his friends even think to caution him? The sub text is a tad offensive, little people are also simpletons in matters of relationships

-“Vazhavaikkum Kadhalukku Jai” is still a smoking hot number, Kamal and Gauthami’s easy chemistry and terrific picturization meant many a hot and sweaty night for a hormonal teenager spent in self-exploration (sadly, not of the philosophical or existential kind)